YouTube pro-paramilitary videos must be removed, say politicians

POLITICIANS in the North have demanded hundreds of videos glorifying republican and loyalist paramilitaries and violence be removed from the internet.

Many hours of footage of IRA, UDA and UVF violence has been catalogued on YouTube, including a large number of propaganda videos celebrating how the IRA “beat” the British army.

In numerous videos the last minutes of the lives of two members of the British SAS are captured, as they are dragged from their car, bundled into a black taxi and driven away to be executed.

In others, there are montages of numerous IRA bombs set to propaganda music such as Go On Home British Soldiers.

The UDA and UVF videos are equally as graphic and again are set to triumphalist music with lyrics such as “shoot and bomb all the provos, (UDA) C Company Shankill salutes you” and “listen Fenians to the warning I give you, stay out of the Shankill if you want to live”.

What especially concerns politicians in the North is that many of the videos have been posted in the past few months and, given the number and tone of the comments which have been added to them, they are generating militant attitudes in the mainly young viewers who watch them.

David Ford MLA, of the Alliance Party, told the Belfast Telegraph: “It is absolutely outrageous that videos promoting the activities of illegal organisations should be on the website.

“I call on YouTube to remove any such offensive material.”

A spokesman for YouTube said: “By making it easier for people to express themselves the web also raises cultural and political concerns in certain countries. That’s why we make it easy for users to flag content they believe violates our terms and conditions and where it does, we remove it.”

The paramilitary videos are under review.